


If You Had Told Clark Kent...

by Marygold_Blue



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Bruce deserves a happy ending, But are absolutely doomed to be best friends, Death, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Just something I knocked out for fun, These two would hate eachother when they first met, legacy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:06:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22594519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marygold_Blue/pseuds/Marygold_Blue
Summary: Who your friends are or will be isn't always clear at first glance. Sometimes you and your best friend hit it off right out of the gate, firing on all cylinders and willing to take a bullet for the other. Sometimes your best friend turns out to have been someone you wanted to strangle and whom, in turn, wanted to beat you in the face with a glowing chunk of meteorite.Either way, it always hurts when it's time to say goodbye.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	If You Had Told Clark Kent...

There was a time many, many years ago that if you told Clark Kent that Bruce Wayne would be his best friend he’d have looked at you like you’d sprouted a second head and spewed fire. Which could happen, Metropolis could be very strange even on a good day. When they’d first met Clark had wanted to do nothing more than defenestrate the martini sipping bourgeoisie prate from the highest window in that sprawling abomination he called an estate. 

This was before Clark saw through the layers upon layers of posturing, of trained to the point of effortlessness affectations that composed the persona Bruce chose to project to the world. Getting to know Bruce Wayne, the real Bruce Wayne, was a masterclass in patience, understanding and human psychology. In his life Clark had met so many people who the world had wronged. He’d seen every possible permutation of how that pain would shape a person into something greater or worse. Bruce was a tragic exemplar of how some folk threw up a thousand barriers between themselves and others to hide the still raw scars. 

There was also a time when if you had told Superman that one day he and the vigilante nutjob from Gotham would stand shoulder to shoulder among the greatest heroes their generation would produce, he’d scoffed. The Batman was a lunatic, a terrorist who happened to prey on criminals. All it would take would be for the gentlest breeze to push him over the edge to start targeting lawful citizens. The only reason he hadn’t dragged him into Blackgate himself was because, in the grand scheme of things, he was a small problem in the very big problem that was Gotham.

This was before Superman had spent a dozen nights fighting alongside him, seeing firsthand the quiet sorrow and the compassion that shaped every action he took. It was a gift he had, Batman that is, the ability to cultivate a myth around himself, transforming a very dangerous man with very dangerous tools into something monstrous in the night without ever actually doing anything monstrous. Letting the right word hang in the air or a slight gesture at the correct moment did more to shape in the minds of Gotham’s worst the image of a wrathful specter of the night than any of the dozens of horrible acts of cruelty he’d been accused of.

If you had at any point prior to it actually happening said that one day Bruce would take a series of literal, actual children under his – pardon the phrase- wing, every one of them becoming expert crimefighters and heroes of peerless caliber, Clark would have flown into a panic at the notion of that man having anything to do with the process of raising a child let alone half a dozen and counting. But as he watched, however improbable as it was, Dick Grayson grow from a young boy into a man under Bruce’s tutelage, he saw another side of the man emerge. What were the words Bruce had said? “I want him to be anything he wants. I just don’t want him to be me.” Yes, that sounds about right.

If you had said that one cold October morning, he’d stand among a score of others in a Gotham City graveyard, a sharp, all too familiar agony in their chests as Bruce Wayne was laid to rest, he’d have believed you. Even before they’d argued philosophy and politics, even before they’d fought and bled together against threats both terrestrial and alien, even before Clark had seen the man beneath the armor who wanted nothing more than a world where no one ever had to experience his pain again, he’d have believed you. Because there was no heart beat that could be mistaken by his ears for another, no soul not worth fighting through Hell itself for, no tiny flicker of light against a universe of darkness not worth dying for. 

If you had said to Clark, after watching his best friend drag himself half dead from one battle to the next until he collapsed, that one day Bruce would die not in a hail of gunfire or to some deathtrap constructed by his foes, but in bed surrounded by family and friends forged over a lifetime of struggle, he’d have prayed you were right. 

Now, forty-five years on since they first met, through fire and flames, victory and defeat, Clark and dozens of other, all the old guard who still lived, and the new whom carried on, said their final good-byes. There would be no miracle resurrections, no quantum paradoxes that would bring him back. Bruce Wayne, Batman, was gone with a smile on his face and Selina’s hand in his. There was only peace for Bruce now. 

Clark contemplated, in a moment of selfishness, if and when he’d see his friend again. The decades had scant touched him. He was stronger and tougher than the arrogant youth he’d been so long ago. Even Kryptonite barely phased him anymore. It was a selfish, foolish thought. To his back was a Gotham City thought impossible when the age of superheroes had begun. It was a bright, shining city whose people weren’t afraid to walk the streets at night. It was a city where the powerful were held to account. Around him were Bruce’s children, by blood and by choice, and their children. 

All around him was where his friend could be found. If you had told Clark that, when they were young and bold and pushing back against the darkness, Clark would have been proud. And in this moment, with the cloud cover breaking and sunlight coming down, Clark was very, very proud of his friend.


End file.
